56 General Pyotr Lushev, the district expected. The futility was clear. We commander, freely cursed subordinates couldn't win. There could only be a and used the singular form of "you" political outcome." in addressing them. That form is usually In 1985, as Tsalko was completing reserved for intimate friends, children, his tour in Afghanistan, Mikhail Gor- and pets, and its use in other contexts bachev succeeded Konstantin Cher- connotes disrespect. (In 1917, muti- nenko as General Secretary of the nous Bolshevik soldiers had forced Communist Party, ending a period in czarist officers to stop addressing them which doddering old men led the coun- that way.) "Lushev paid no attention try and the economy stagnated. Tsalko to me, as if I were a piece of furni- felt that the change was overdue. "I ture," Tsalko said. "But I'm a man, had realized that the perpetual succes- too. And I see." sion of one old idiot after another After threeyearsofthis duty, Tsalko would turn out badly," he told me. desperately wanted a new assignment. He volun- teered for Afghanistan. "I went there with sincere faith," he said. "I thought that it was an unjust war, but from your side." He pointed at me and snorted "The change should have happened earlier." Tsalko became part of the upheaval that Gorba- chev unleashed. In 1989, he ran for the Congress of People's Deputies. "The people nominated me," quietly. The Army put Tsalko in com- Tsalko said. "The Army political or- mand of an airborne regiment based at gans came out hard against me. They Kandahar. "We had a lot of different said I was an extremist, a dangerous assignments," he recalled. "Reconnais- man. They only discredited themselves." sance. Transport operations. Supply He won the election, and went to operations. Search-and-destroy missions Moscow intent on reforming the against ground targets." He paused. Party--on getting rid of the rest of its "It lies on my conscience." old leaders and democratizing it. Over Wsalko, I had heard from other the next two years, as he watched the officers, developed a reputation as an Party conservatives check most of the effective commander who used his men reformers' initiatives, he decided that carefully, instead of throwing them reforming the Party was an illusion-- blindly into the hills after the guerril- that it was beyond reform. las. I asked him about that reputation, By the beginning of this year, Tsalko and he acknowledged it. "The regi- had begun to feel like a man at a dead ment fought well, in general, and it end. Within the Congress, he and a had few losses," he said. "One crew small group of officers who agreed was shot down and another crashed, with him felt increasingly isolated as That was a low loss rate. The regi- Gorbachev brought in conservatives ment was decorated, and I got the like Gennady Yanayev and Boris Order of the Red Banner." Pugo--as Vice-President and Minis- But as the months went by in Af- ter of Internal Affairs, respectively. ghanistan his uneasiness grew. After The reformers advocated a much a while, he realized why. "I knew all smaller, professional Soviet Army, with too well what a partisan war looked perhaps a million and a half soldiers like--the reasons it arose and how it instead of more than three million was conducted. The Afghan war was conscripts. The verkhushka dismissed extraordinarily similar to a partisan their proposals. war--to the war that the heroes of my But perestroika had been creating childhood had fought." This time, new power centers beyond the control though, he could not insist on playing of the verkhushka. In 1990, over the role of the partisan, as he and his Gorbachev's opposition, Boris Yeltsin friends had done back on the Semyon won a close vote and became chairman Budyonny Collective Farm. He was of the Supreme Soviet, or parliament, stuck on the other side. "That caused of the Russian Republic. Yeltsin took me tremendous doubt," he said. "Some- over the old republic bureaucracy, which thing wasn't right. It wasn't a war had been an inert subsidiary of the against American imperialism. It was central government, and began to turn a war against the Afghan people. It it into a government of Russian re- was, morally speaking, something formers. In April of 1991, Tsalko absolutely different from what I had became a deputy chairman of Yeltsin's PURE PENDLETON? Town Clothes TM available at these and other fine stores. 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